


when your body gave ground

by casualbird



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 1960s, Angst, Canon Compliant, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Canon, Repression, Rival Sex, the worst after-sex breakfast ever served, two bros chillin in the sixties zero feet apart because they are gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:54:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: “So I’m just gonna tell you, Yasu, that you’re--” Ikkei sighs, a pebbled sound. Resigned. “You’re pretty enough that you’re gonna get me into all kinds of trouble.”Yasu half-laughs, cracks a wide unguarded smile. Lets it fade, quickly, to something sly.Reaches out, darting and slick-palmed, not even thinking of all the time he’s waited for this. Curls his short fingers around the knob of Ikkei’s wrist, purrs. “All kinds? You’ve decided?”Ikkei’s eyes roll. “Yep. Guess I have.”Ikkei and Yasu's rivalry boils over in the spring of 1968, and they clutch at the things they can't have.
Relationships: Nekomata Yasufumi/Ukai Ikkei
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23
Collections: stories that touched me





	when your body gave ground

**Author's Note:**

> they're both +- 23. i did the math as best i could, best not to think about it too much. similarly, if there are any historical inaccuracies in this i frankly have no interest in hearing about them.

Maybe it started in high school, when they never spoke beyond trash-talking one another, when Yasu would pace his room listless after every practice match and ask _that one, why that one?_

Maybe when they were twenty-one, and Yasu got a call from the new blood at Karasuno, and it was _that one_ down the line, maybe he thought it was fate.

Well. Not fate, he never believed in fate.

But it was one hell of a coincidence.

He thinks it really, properly began the year after that, when the practice was over and all the little crows were fidgeting on the bus and still Ikkei hung back fifteen minutes in the equipment room, just shooting the breeze. And he was beautiful, coltish and hale, and all Yasu could think of was pinning him to that bare slice of wall just the width of his broad back.

All Yasu could think of was kissing him, curling his fingers in the collar of that old shirt, pressing in on him like tide against longstanding stone. Of feeling him yield, if only just a little.

He settled on asking him to get drinks sometime instead.

And maybe it was that weekend, in the bar with the color TV--something about cheap beer, a warm night, Ikkei hollering at the volleyballers through the screen. Something about the brow-creasing passion in him, the way he held his fists. The way he laughed, soused-loud and on and on and on when Yasu cut in with a joke.

The way it made Yasu feel at home.

Or maybe it was when he knew he had a chance; when those two brainless crow boys finally settled their score and celebrated with a sweaty, crushing _kiss_ at the center of the court. When Ikkei lost his head, and Yasu saw through his own death-rattle laughing that there was something not quite _right_ about it, something…

It didn’t ring hollow, he felt. It was simply true a different way, when Ikkei told those boys they couldn’t _do_ that.

Maybe he just learned it over time, like any skill, maybe it was just something gradual.

And why, he didn’t know, couldn’t even begin to cover _why._

But--what was useful was the truth of it, that Yasu looked at Ikkei and saw a rival, a friend, a length of bare wall in the equipment room. That, perhaps without even realizing it, he’d begun to bide his time, that he looked at that man and thought _someday._

Someday.

* * *

They aren’t the sort of men to think about the universe--only to say that nothing in it matters when they’re drinking. When they’re sat in that bar with its color TV, when the volleyball’s on, when the world is golden and sparkling, as if viewed through a full glass of beer.

When they’re together, unfettered, not tied up with work or a phone line, when there is barely a meter between. Yasu adores it, though he’d never admit it in words.

Just in the set of his elbow on the table, his chin against his hand, the smile that plays slyly on his mouth. The way his free arm will reach for Ikkei, will jostle him, flick him with a finger.

The way he speaks, fluid and friendly and fey, filling in the gaps of Ikkei’s silence. Riling him up, one dog gnawing at another’s ear, just _itching_ for a spar.

“How was the drive up?” he asks, all innocent, as if he doesn’t know the answer. As if this isn’t as much a tradition as the volleyball, the beer.

Ikkei half-snorts, and Yasu can be fairly certain it’s a laugh. “I hate driving in Tokyo,” he says, in that gravelly tone he reserves for simple facts. For trash talk, once in a while, when he really wants it to sink in.

Yasu near about purrs with it, reaching across to cuff him on the shoulder. “We’re _well_ into the suburbs, Ikkei, honey.” Smiling, he says it, and wider when Ikkei bats his hand away.

It’s an old overture--a well-worn opening, if they were the sort of men who played at chess. But it works every time, and Ikkei would always say that if something ain’t broke, you don’t go fixing it.

They sling it back and forth a while--the argument turns to ad hominem, and then worse, to shit-talking each other’s boys. They level each other with glares, ask bristling _what’d you say about my libero? You wanna step outside?_

And Yasu--Yasu does want to step outside. Wants to strip his shirt off, square up. Wants to fake right, to make him miss a swing, and then--oh, it doesn’t matter.

He wants to tangle with him, to be tangled _in_ him, to fall to the concrete and never not be touching him again.

This is not news.

What is news is the way Ikkei looks tonight, how hale and strong and beautiful he is. He looks like he could beat the world bloody, could make them all sorry.

Yasu’s fingers twitch against the table, with the way they want to touch. To stroke the hard ridge of his cheekbone, skim through that close-cropped hair. Trace the hewn edge of his clavicle, grasp at the collar of his undershirt, shown out like a taunt.

He’s been biding long enough, he thinks.

“You know,” he says, when he’s got even a sliver of an opportunity, “for as long as we’ve been coming to this bar, I’ve never seen you take a girl home.” A cheshire smile, obliging.

Ikkei scoffs. “Yasu,” he says, a passive first warning. “You know that’s not the kind of man I am.”

“Oh,” says Yasu, honeyed and dripping and too much, he knows it’s too much but he can’t resist, not with the way Ikkei stares at him, not with how _gorgeous_ he is.

“I _know_ that’s not the kind of man you are.”

He can see Ikkei chewing his cheek, hear stifled laughter. “I s’pose I walked right into that one.”

“You did,” lilts Yasu, singsong, triumphant. He lowers his voice, hides it under the TV, the chatter. “D’you wanna walk into something else?”

Maybe that is too much, especially for the way Ikkei is scowling--Yasu’s keyed-up to run, to play it off. Just a barroom joke, nothing really.

They’d both know it was a lie, but they’d walk away from it okay.

Ikkei sighs, though, the way he does before he pays for something. Like he’s just about resigned himself to it.

“Yasu,” he says quietly, hedging only just a little. “Are you playing?”

A swift shake of the head, a dive over the cliff. “Nope,” he says, as if it’s casual, as if it’s easy.

He’ll never show the twitching in his hands, the way he sweats under the collar.

Neither will Ikkei--his face is a stone slab, stern. He breathes long and hard and says “if we’re talking about this,” and then a long pause, “it’s gonna be in the car.”

So Ikkei pays the tab.

They don’t say a word until the car doors slam them in. Just watch each other from the corners of their eyes, kick back and try not to look suspicious.

They probably look suspicious, probably everyone in this bar can see them for what they’re about to do, for who they are.

Ikkei clenches his jaw about it, and Yasu just tries not to care.

Behind the tinted windows, though, he can lean into him. Just slightly. Not enough to touch.

Oh, how he wants to touch.

But Ikkei’s looking at him with flinty eyes, face illegible, and maybe he still ought to run? He’s not sure.

He’s blundered before, but never like this.

He wonders if he’s finally said enough.

Apparently not. Ikkei turns to him, burning so bright it’s like an interrogation light in Yasu’s eye.

“Tell me what you mean,” he says. “No screwing around.”’

Yasu scrabbles for it, shredding at his words. There must be some right way to say it, something clean and movie-slick.

He settles, after the deadest twenty seconds of his life, on mumbling “I want you to take me home.”

“And?”

He glares--but really it’s best, that he’ll be made to say it. Damnable, the way that Ikkei’s always right.

“And I want to do the things people do when they take each other home.”

This, he thinks, is the part where Ikkei kicks him from the car. This is the part where he trudges the eight blocks home, where he slams the door and sits desolate, alone in the dark.

Or not. He’s hanging on it by the ends of his teeth, his nails, this slivered slim _or not._

Ikkei just clears his throat, though, asks him point-blank “are you drunk?”

Yasu’s had a drink and a half, maybe less. Even he’s not that much of a lightweight.

“Not in the least,” he says, and Ikkei nods.

“Alright,” he says, “‘cause we shouldn’t be doing anything like this, but we especially shouldn’t if you’re not sober, so--”

A pause.

“That’s good.”

It is? Yasu flares with it, with the admission, the soft-rasping timbre of his voice.

He leans closer, nudges Ikkei’s shoulder with his own.

Ikkei frowns, and sighs, and nudges back.

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, and it’s easy, gentle as ever he’s heard him.

Yasu snorts, conjuring some makeshift levity to hide the hammer of his heart _\--”you’re_ unbelievable. You scared the devil out of me, Ikkei, that’s not sexy.”

“I don’t think anything could get the devil out of you,” he says, hoarse and honest and just edged with admiration, “but I’m sorry.”

Ikkei never apologizes. It blooms like a chrysanthemum in Yasu’s chest, wide and warm and vivid.

“I had to--had to know. I had to know you were serious.” He looks, for a second, like an older man.

A nod, soft and slow, understanding. “I am,” Yasu tells him, barely above a whisper. “If I--If I told you just how much I wanted--” _this, you, everything,_ “well, you’d never let me live it down.”

He lays one hand on the cusp of Ikkei’s thigh, through hard denim just above his knee. He’s warm, is always so warm, and Yasu wants it everywhere he can.

There’s still something in the back of him that won’t believe Ikkei’s going to let him touch. But he does--makes no move to protest. Only looks down at him, smiles. “Good,” he says. “You’d never let me live it down either, so. We’re even.”

Yasu’s lips curl up at the corners, because this--it’s nearly too much. He already won’t ever live it down. “We’re never even,” he asserts, “I’ve always got the upper hand.”

Ikkei’s huffing laughter, lips parted, close enough to kiss--but not here. If only for Ikkei’s sake, not here in this parking lot, with the whole wide world outside.

Yasu puts himself, instead, to finishing this purring thought of his. “I wouldn’t mind you taking me down a peg,” he says, “though I’ll have to make you work for it.”

Another laugh, a pregame smile like Ikkei wouldn’t have it any other way.

He lists closer--for a second Yasu wonders if he’s really going to kiss him. His tongue darts out, wets his lips, but Ikkei doesn’t. Just smiles, tells him he’s _the worst._

“You love me,” Yasu says, forceful, teasing, the way he always says it. Because he says it all the time.

Because maybe, just maybe, he wants it to be true.

He doesn’t let it hang for long, has some inkling of when to stop pushing his luck. “Now stop looking this gift horse in the mouth,” he snips, “and start the damn car.”

His palm doesn’t move an inch from Ikkei’s thigh.

Ikkei starts the damn car, pulls out of the parking lot and into the street, takes all those eight blocks on the edge of that precipice.

They can’t wait to fall.

* * *

Yasu scrabbles with his key, missing the lock again and again and again because--because here they are. Home, his place, the door shut and the light low and the neighbors forgettable, here they are in _private._

It’s not as if they’ve never been here before, that he’s never let Ikkei in, he’s just--

He laid his hand on Ikkei’s thigh, the whole drive home. And they broke, walked up the steps and across the balcony like two insignificant red-blooded creatures, unworthy of notice, but now the door is closed.

Eventually, too, it is locked. Quick-clicking, and Yasu’s dragged away by the wrist, stopping short with his panting chest an inch from Ikkei’s.

“I know I’m supposed to give you some spiel,” he says, raspy and dark and low as cast iron, “about some kind of… something-or-other.”

Yasu nods, slow, fingertips twitching for all they want to be in the collar of that shirt, against those sharp-wrought collarbones.

He could pick at him for this, for the fumbling of his tongue. Could chide him, fix him with that courtside smile.

It doesn’t cross his mind at all, though, not even a flicker. All he can do is watch the purse in Ikkei’s lips, listen to the measure of his breathing. Feel small, as close as he is to him, eye level with the point of his Adam’s apple.

“But we both know that that’s not what I’m good at. If I tried to make it sound like the movies you’d laugh me out of this house.”

It’s true. He’d win. Forever.

He doesn’t want to, not just now. Not ever, because the contest is always the thing. Yasu thinks on it fondly, so fondly.

Thinks on Ikkei the same way, though it’d take a real power play to get him to admit it.

“So I’m just gonna tell you, Yasu, that you’re--” Ikkei sighs, a pebbled sound. Resigned. “You’re pretty enough that you’re gonna get me into all kinds of trouble.”

Yasu half-laughs, cracks a wide unguarded smile. Lets it fade, quickly, to something sly.

Reaches out, darting and slick-palmed, not even thinking of all the time he’s waited for this. Curls his short fingers around the knob of Ikkei’s wrist, purrs. “All kinds? You’ve decided?”

Ikkei’s eyes roll. “Yep. Guess I have.” 

“W-well,” Yasu says, and that’s--oh, he’s never done this before. Never been here, on both sides of this coin, winning and losing on the selfsame hand of cards. He tries, tries not to let it show, but he can tell from the gleam, the crinkling at the corner of Ikkei’s eye that he knows.

 _You’re a virgin too,_ he wants to say, all petulant. Wants to level this playing field, this strange seesawing thing.

More than that, though, he just wants. Breadthlessly, breathlessly.

“You should probably come down here and kiss me then,” he says, all lightly edged and coaxing. His fingers lock tighter around that wrist, tugging down, and he thinks he’s just about clinched it when Ikkei is kissing him, hard.

It comes at full tilt, no artifice, no grace. Their noses crush, front teeth clashing--it almost hurts, like sprinting on the last dregs of endurance. It’s a good solid honest kiss, he thinks, and he gives it back as best he can, striving winded to keep up.

His hand swipes up Ikkei’s arm, clasping at his sleeve, tugging ‘til the cuff unrolls, ‘til that extra pack of cigarettes comes loose, skitters down to the floor, forgotten.

Ikkei _hmphs,_ drawing back, but it’s no matter. The scowl on his face is a familiar one, a dear daring thing that can be fixed with a wide-wild smile, just dripping with false innocence. Ikkei rolls his eyes at it, and Yasu knows he’s won.

And then Ikkei’s kissing him again, all-fired, fierce enough that Yasu swears he’s going to bruise, that he’ll show it out like a new tattoo, an indelible mark to show exactly whose he is.

As tipsy, as breathless, as contrary as he is, he wants that. Wants to throw that gauntlet, taunt the world, ask them all _what’s it to you?_ Tall, snark, and handsome is _his_ right now, and that’s something everybody else is simply going to have to live with.

He doesn’t say so, because the thought would give Ikkei an aneurysm, because he’s kissing him so deep that breath has gone completely out of fashion, because he has better things to do.

That hand forges onward and up, clutching at Ikkei’s unbeatable jaw, fingertips firm in the soft space under his ear. Strokes there, just a little, and Ikkei jolts, makes a sound like he’s weak weak weak.

And it’s Yasu that pulls back this time, slick lips skewing smug, lashes heavy over half-shut eyes. “Is it gonna be that easy?” he asks, and Ikkei nearly growls with laughter, hauls him bodily back in.

Grasps at him, clutches at the back of his shirt, strums spread fingers down his spine. Lays them there, pressing at the small of his back, gathering him up against a hard-corded thigh.

“Not on your life,” he says, breath hot in Yasu’s ear, and--something about dying by the sword, Yasu shivers. Hitches up, somewhere deep inside, can’t help a chipped-off little noise.

He shrugs it off with his next breath, bites his swelling lip. “What’re you gonna do about it, then?”

As if this is a battle, a match to be won, as if they’re squared up even now, blood spiking with something more than just proximity.

“I’m gonna damn well take care of you,” he rasps, and it sounds so overspillingly honest that Yasu can’t hold down a little tremor. Ikkei’s smiling, too, cocksure, something next to wolfish. Something like the way he smiles on his nights off, when the whole world’s going his way. “See if you’re satisfied then.”

Yasu’s voice shakes on his retort, fingers scrabbling half-mad to the hem of Ikkei’s shirt, grasping there.

“I’m never satisfied,” he says, with all the vivacity, the irony that he can muster, and Ikkei laughs, abrupt and barking, too-loud for the closeness of them. 

“Oh,” he drawls, but there’s a tiny tear in the facade--a little pause, a space where a braver, weaker man might call Yasu by name.

Might call him something worse.

Yasu will have it out of him, he decides, as many times, as breathless as he can.

Ikkei finishes, though, “I’m still dumb enough to try,” and for a second--for a second the competition’s gone. Someone’s called time-out, though Yasu’s not sure who. Maybe the drink and a half on Ikkei’s tongue, maybe just the steady stupid arc of Yasu’s heart.

 _I know,_ he doesn’t say. _It’s good._

“That so?” shakes out instead, with the clasp of Yasu’s palm to the sharp crest of a hip, to naked skin at last, blunt nails digging in.

Ikkei only nods, gruffly. “Yep.” Like it’s nothing, like it’s just a fact. The sort of question that might be asked after someone hits their head, quick-fired and certain.

There’s nothing for the skip in Yasu’s heart, the humming in his veins, the way he wants. Nothing but teeth in Ikkei’s lip, small hand slipping up his hardlined waist. Nothing but the sound he makes, rough and muffled in the nowhere space between mouths, but the sigh that gusts out hot on Yasu’s cheek.

“Big talk,” taunts Yasu, still so close it can’t be anything but a kiss. Still at that altitude, in the dizzy thinness of that atmosphere. “So you’re saying you’re man enough to carry me to bed?”

He doesn’t doubt Ikkei’s ability. Has seen him with his shirt off, knows the verve, the strength in him.

He just wants it, is the thing. And he could have it other ways--could bat thick lashes, go coyly belly-up--but that’s not the game.

The game is the flare in Ikkei’s eye, the slick smile on his face, the way he moves to take him up, uncompromising. Fluid, like he’s practiced it, like he knows just exactly where all that weight should go.

Up in corded arms, leant back against the broad plane of his chest--if this isn’t winning then nothing is. Yasu preens, lays his arms languid over Ikkei’s wiry shoulders.

He carries him, through the living room, down the hall. He knows the way, has put drunk limpet Yasu down more times than either could count.

Maybe it’s that thought, that makes Yasu sentimental. The way Ikkei would roll him on his side, leave a glass of water by the futon. The way he’d stay, stern and silent and pretending it was the greatest inconvenience in the world, until he was certain Yasu slept.

Sometimes Yasu would find him there when morning came, sprawled out cold against bare floorboards. But only sometimes.

Maybe it’s just being held, fast against the bulwark of Ikkei’s body. Like a princess, like a bride.

It’s a wild-hair thought on a wild-hair night. Yasu resolves to forget it, and besides--

If Yasu said _I’ll be your girl_ Ikkei would surely drop him. No questions asked, he would be gone, the score chalked irrevocably on the board.

So he says nothing; just mouths at Ikkei’s wiry neck, grazes the thin skin there with teeth.

“Leave any marks,” Ikkei grumbles, half-strained with the weight, “and I swear--” but the threat doesn’t come through, like a crackle on the phone line, it just hangs. Still, Yasu laves at him, still Ikkei bears him full across the threshold.

Groans, when he bends to lay Yasu on the futon, but does not let him fall--and then he’s over him, dark-eyed, radiating warmth.

Yasu reaches for him, pulls him down. Kisses the panting breath out of him, slings one heel over his hip. Pins him like a grapple, won’t let go.

“Fuck,” spits Ikkei, when he’s granted even one second to gather himself. “They’re--” and who _they_ are doesn’t matter, nothing matters but Yasu’s clever little hands rucking up his shirt, weaseling between to feel his solid core, “they’re always telling me what girls like. ‘S useless. What do you like?”

A giggle, and it’s only half for show. “Thought you said you knew how to take care of me.”

“Hm,” he shoots back, between deep searching kisses, “thought you--” but his retort’s cut off when that palm slips down, cups him where he needs it, where his pulse runs full-bore against his jeans.

Yasu swallows the noise he makes, full-throated, holds him as he ruts into that hand. Slides the fingers of his free hand through that close-cropped hair, curling at his nape as if there was length enough to pull.

“I like you kissing me,” he rasps, lips dragging on Ikkei’s flaring cheek. “And I know you like making me shut up, so get to it.”

He does, laughing even as they collide. Kisses him restlessly, in rhythm with the way he rocks into Yasu’s palm--back and forth, almost even-keeled.

Not all the way, though--there is strain in him, there is affect, there is _affection,_ and it feels to Yasu like the first draught of beer, exhilarating.

And it’s not enough, even as Ikkei huffs into his mouth, even as one arm surges up under his shirt, past his waist to fit fingers in the gaps between his ribs, to catch at his nipple with a callused fingertip--oh, it’s not enough.

He pushes Ikkei off again, near about hauls him by the scruff--and forgets, a moment, what he was going to say.

The way he looks--his mouth slack, his pupils blown, that crease between his brows--oh, Ikkei is beautiful. Half-drowned and deadly gorgeous, and in that instant Yasu knows he’ll be touching himself to this for all his life.

He wants more of it, and that’s--oh, right, that’s--

Ikkei beats him to it.

“Are we gonna take our clothes off,” he grouses, edging on hoarse, “or do I gotta give you my class ring first?”

Yasu’s teeth catch in his lip, in his dark-sparkling smile. “You’ve prob’ly bought me dinner at some point, so I _guess_ it’ll be alright,” he says, as if considering, as if his fingers do not _spasm_ with the will to strip him bare, to see him all hewn-out, angled, tan.

“Not such a good girl, huh?” Ikkei remarks, and Yasu doesn’t have the time to think on how it thrills him, not with Ikkei’s hand rucking up Yasu’s shirt even further, grasping for any skin he can. Tracing his Adonis belt, the waxing curve of his belly.

It sets him on edge, a little, the way he carries weight. Sets him on edge, the way he can see Ikkei’s half-joking sneer, can hear that voice saying _something something going soft?_

His eyes squint shut a second, before he realizes that that’s stupid, that his skin ought to be thicker, that if Ikkei really does say something like that there’ll be a way to turn it around--he hazards, then, to open them.

With his palm formed to that swell, with his jaw trying so hard not to slacken--Ikkei looks like he’s seen God.

Yasu kisses him again, hauls him down so hard they near about collapse together. Doesn’t mind Ikkei’s startled sound or the clacking of their teeth or that they’re both still--so _clothed,_ it doesn’t matter.

Not until it does, until they’re surging off as quickly as they’d come, bolting off just long enough to tear off all their clothes, to huck them mindless off somewhere in Yasu’s tiny bedroom, to forget them, curse them blind. 

And then they’re back there side by side, fumbling down half-off the futon, paying no mind to the hard floorboards, to anything but the way they laugh into each other’s searing mouths, the freerange of hands on skin. Yasu strokes up Ikkei’s side, feels the strength in his obliques, the bow of his ribcage when he pants, everything. The hard sinew of his shoulder, of his neck when he hauls Ikkei off, cranes so he might take the hint and kiss his throat.

He does, but not without a snicker, not without some jab at Yasu’s need, and--the rasp of tongue on apple-thin skin makes him forget, makes him cry out.

Makes Ikkei laugh again, and he’ll show him, Yasu parts his thighs, wraps one leg over his hip, drags him down and in and _oh--_

There’s a spilt-second where all they can do is shiver in it, all they can do is sigh. And then Ikkei’s hand is on the small of Yasu’s back, hot breath in his ear murmuring _thassit,_ and Yasu won’t stop spasming, won’t stop rutting up against him. 

The angle’s off, of course, but he can feel Ikkei in the crease of his hip, can feel him hard and twitching and it’s for him, it was _Yasu_ who riled him all up like this.

It’s a heady thing, almost as much as the feeling itself, as the hard arm in the valley of his waist, the mouth that’s doubtless stopping just short of marking up his jaw.

Heady, like Ikkei’s voice when it grazes him again, teeth still dragging on his neck--”Christ,” he says, like he’s seeing mirages in the desert, “you’re all wet.”

The purse of swollen lips, the quirking of a tight brow. “Oh? And you’re doing any better?”

He’s not, Yasu can feel it on his skin, in the space where they come together all jagged, all jerking with inelegance, still perfect. Or perhaps it’s only himself, or the join of perspiration, but it doesn’t matter, not at all. Not with that lean body formed to his, with laughter in his throat, Ikkei harrumphing in his ear.

Not with the way they press together where it counts, where they need--Yasu feels the strength of Ikkei’s core, like this, the strength that bore him like nothing down the hallway. Feels him so unyielding, and wonders--dares to hope that he’s the only one who can chip away at him like this.

He rolls his hips up, hitching, with a gasp that’s only a little bit played up, and--Ikkei _sighs,_ shaking on the slip of his cock in the space between Yasu’s thighs, all warm and soft-surrounding.

“Shit,” he mumbles, fumbling, and Yasu can’t help but agree--Ikkei clings to him like this, kicks out to twine their legs at knobby ankles, and the crinkling of his face… Yasu mouths at the corner of his eye, in the space where crows-feet form.

It’s not a kiss, not quite, that would be--it would be a shade too far, to kiss the lids of Ikkei’s eyes.

Still he wants to.

More than that, he doesn’t want to _lose._

So it’s not a kiss.

Ikkei doesn’t snipe at him--just huffs, just cants his hips, but as tender as it is the skin drags--Yasu presses him back, twists away a second, takes the brunt of his concerned, confused face, but--

“No,” he says, and that just makes it worse, makes Ikkei’s brow crease tight--he’s only groping for the lotion, though, they’ve knocked the bottle over and he can’t find it and--”’s fine, I’m only getting--!”

He holds up his prize and Ikkei slackens--though he’s still such a florid red, his mouth still hanging open half an inch.

It closes, and then opens again, amused--”right next to the bed, Yasu? Really?”

A wink, as he gets a dollop on his fingers. “Only for when I’m thinking about you.”

“That so?” Ikkei clearly doesn’t mean to sound so… so chalant. He wants to quirk his eyebrow, to pretend he’s never worried about a damn thing in his life, that he lives on air and coaches volleyball, that he’s better than everything, oh, Yasu sees this in him. 

“Yeah,” he snips back, with a smirk, “you but mostly the coach at Seijoh.”

Ikkei watches as Yasu’s slick hand dips between his thighs, lip bitten at the picture, the mess he’s making of himself, and he must forget to laugh.

It rings in Yasu, a bit, like a stone dropped down a well. He finishes quickly, swipes the excess off on the edge of the blanket, smiles when Ikkei glares at the mess he’s making.

Comes back to him, wraps himself around, and it’s an apology, when he kisses him again. Warm and wide-open, pressing down, down until Ikkei’s head falls flat against the floor, until that arm is clutching at his waist again, the soft-covered knots of his spine. Yasu hitches up his thigh, finagles Ikkei’s cock between, and--

“O-oh,” Ikkei stammers, when that plush skin closes in around him. And for a second that’s all there is, their breathing, heavy and warm and muffled in each other’s shoulders, hair.

“You wouldn’t let the coach at Seijoh have you like this,” Ikkei grinds, hoarse as his hips jerk up. Yasu only answers on a gasp, all he can muster with the crown of Ikkei’s cock nudging up at his perineum, but it’s enough.

He wouldn’t. Would never. The coach at Seijoh is like forty-five, a total bore, and he doesn’t even drink.

Even if he was as hard-hewn beautiful as Ikkei, Yasu wouldn’t give a damn.

There’s no snappy way to phrase that, so he doesn’t. Decides, with his mouth closed, lips laid on Ikkei’s collarbone, that he never will.

Just cleaves to him instead, fits himself into the rhythmless rocking, the sighing part of lips and scrabble of fingers. Ikkei lunges into him, movements firm and sure, decisive as anything he’s ever done and it’s that as much as his cock against that hard abdomen that makes Yasu ache.

Makes him whine, embarrassing as it is, makes him quiver, makes him wrap Ikkei up in all his limbs, makes him take that wiry shoulder in his mouth just to muffle the way he’s losing all this ground.

Still Ikkei strokes broad-palmed across his back, still he asks him all staccato if it’s good.

“Don’t get a big head,” says Yasu, but the strain in it’s enough, the way his words don’t lay quite right against each other, like something stuck haphazard back together--Ikkei sighs, says _alright, alright, I’ve got you._

And he does. Has him hard against that crushing chest, tight in his strongarmed grip, and Yasu wants to throw the game.

Wants to lose, wants to lay down in his hand, under that voice that rasps _thassit, there you go, Yasu,_ that clasps him.

He won’t feel the same way in the morning, though, or at the next match, or the next time they go drinking, the next time Ikkei is fool enough to look at him like that again. Instead he tightens the vise of his thighs, makes Ikkei gasp all open-throated. Nips at his ear, whispers “coward, at least call me sweetheart.”

Ikkei does, without a whit of hesitation. _“Sweetheart,”_ breathless and gravelly, from the bottom of that barrel chest and deeper. And without words--in the quick relentless tide of his hips, the way one hand comes up to stroke through Yasu’s hair, he calls him sweetheart.

It’s not possible to hold him harder, but Yasu does. Not possible to kiss him any deeper, when their mouths even come close to lining up, but Yasu tries. He breathes him in--hard work smells so good on Ikkei, warm and vital like the canting of their hips together, the words in his ear.

Nuzzles down into Ikkei’s shoulder, hiding his flaring face, muffling everything he shouldn’t say, and that’s--that’s when Ikkei spills, tremoring, wailing breathless and low and astonished.

Yasu can, at least, justify holding him until he’s done. Until he slackens, strings all slashed and tangled, until he falls back gasping on the floor, mumbling _fuck_ and _sweetheart_ and _ohhh…_

When he returns to himself, Yasu’s smirking, smoothing out the futon where it’s scuffed all out of place. Reaching with his clean hand to ruffle Ikkei’s hair.

“So,” he says, and there’s something of a purr in it. “I can beat you at drinking _and_ volleyball _and_ all this… looks like a round of diving drills for you.”

Ikkei huffs a laugh, and the shake of his head is weighted down with fondness. “How ‘bout I take care of you instead?”

He makes a brief show of sizing him up--Ikkei’s beautiful like this, so worked up that Yasu can make out the hammer of his heart, can nigh on feel the exhausted weight of his head and his fingers.

“I guess you’ll do,” says Yasu, but the smile on his face has overshot from cool, buried itself in a place of soft sincerity, something he can’t smooth over.

Ikkei looks warmed through with it, if he could possibly melt down any more. Takes him in his arms, sits him in his lap, and it comes over Yasu like a riptide, a manic undertow, that smallness.

One rough hand slips down his side, petting at his flank, tracing the crest of his hip. Coming down to curl around his cock, make him gasp and laugh and quiver.

“There you go,” lows Ikkei, strokes meted out easy even as his hand and breath are shaking. “Thassit, Yasu.”

“Sweetheart,” Yasu huffs, insistent. But Ikkei only hems, strokes his thumb over the crown of Yasu’s cock, and--it isn’t even that.

It’s just the way he’s got him, cradled up against that old reliable frame, one hand rubbing slow circles into his back. Just the way his pulse feels as it slows, just the breath in Yasu’s ear, the voice that murmurs _that’s right, go on, give it up._

He does, and he’d never let anyone call the sound he makes a whimper.

Ikkei lays him down, after, gets him mostly on the bunched-up futon. Still his hip, his thigh lays flat against the bare floorboard, its lacquered coolness a blessing.

His heartbeat thrums so hard it makes him shake. He musters up a smile anyway, leans up on his elbows. Ikkei cows at the sight, purses his lips so hard they go white. It’s a funny look on him, with perspiration shining on his brow, the bridge of his nose. With the redness in his cheeks.

“I’ll get you a washcloth,” he says, looking down, and--well, yes, that’s probably a good idea. Yasu’s thighs are slick, drying tacky, honestly pretty disgusting. He supposes it’s like a hangover, that the strange ringing discomfort is worth all of the revelry.

But--”no,” he says, a little archly. “I’ll do it.” And he does, pads off to the bathroom to take care of it. Messy business, sex. He can’t wait to do it again.

He wonders, looking in the mirror, if people on the street will be able to look at him and tell. If they’ll know who it was with, and who had the upper hand, and if he liked it. If he likes him.

It’s stupid. Yasu finishes up, makes his way back to the bedroom.

The futon’s laid out all nice when he gets there, lined up with the cracks between the floorboards. Ikkei lays in it, facing the door, away from the pillow that he’s not even trying to share. It’s cool, smoothed over, all for Yasu.

He beds down, jabs Ikkei’s bare back with an elbow.

“Get some damn sleep,” he grumbles, but there’s a sweetness to it, buried in the bitter like molasses. Ikkei calls him, gruff and gentle, by his name.

“Not until you call me sweetheart again,” needles Yasu, and though they’re lying back to back he knows that Ikkei must understand the exact expression he’s wearing, must know precisely the hook of his smile.

It’s a minute before he responds--Yasu wonders if he’s fallen asleep, wonders if he should roll his eyes and mumble _men._ But he’s not, he comes around, he says it. Rough, like an uncut stone.

And a deal’s a deal, he shuts up, closes his eyes, but it’s a long time before Yasu can sleep.

* * *

“Y’r kitchen’s a damn mess,” Ikkei says, as flat and rough as the cast-iron pan he’s cracking eggs in, and, well. His back’s to him, he can’t see the shrug, the nonplussed purse of Yasu’s lips.

It’s true. His kitchen’s a mess, his apartment’s a mess. His bedclothes are a mess, tangled and sweaty and slept-in, just this side of cold enough to drive him out into the world.

He chews his lip a minute, still swollen from last night. Still tender and pink from harsh kisses, testing little nips--it’s like the space where a missing tooth would be. Yasu can’t leave it alone, can’t stop darting over it with the tip of his tongue. Can’t stop sucking at it, listless, ever since he woke up.

There’s no retort in his raw throat, no edge on his tongue. His head is still muzzy, his body still humming in ways it never has before. Blood twitches through the barely-there marks under his collar, the stubble-scrapes across his chest.

He still can’t let it sit--not when the silence thickens like the ache between his brows, not when Ikkei looks so damn righteous standing there over the stove.

“You’re a mess,” says Yasu, knowing fully well he’s off his form. Knowing it’s the sort of thing he would have said to him in high school, back before he understood just what it _was_ about him. What made him want to cling to Ikkei’s every leveled glare, every cocksure little chide.

Ikkei just laughs under his breath, dark and bittersweet as molasses. Scrambles the eggs with restless little movements of his wrist. 

“Maybe so,” he grunts, shrugging up the stretched-out collar of his shirt. Yasu has to smile, it’s so like the things he’d said last night, as confessional as Ikkei’s ever been.

He hadn’t even been in his cups, he’d made them both stop drinking. He was right enough to drive, to glower at Yasu’s neighbors on the way up to his unit.

Still his words ran slurred and sloppy as spilt beer. Still he held him.

It’s possible that he still wants to, even. Yasu wasn’t sure he’d be here, this morning. Wasn’t sure if he’d just leave him with his front door unlocked, with some laconic note on torn-off paper. He’d imagined all the things Ikkei might have written, felt preemptively the way they would have pierced.

But here he is, all his length and breadth crowded into Yasu’s tiny kitchen, prodding all fussy at the eggs.

It’s a sight to behold, and Yasu hasn’t even seen his face yet. 

And then he’s shaken from it, ‘cause Ikkei’s grumbling again--”siddown,” he says, “you’re eating.”

Yasu sits, watches the steely focus in Ikkei’s moves--even as he’s scraping eggs onto a plate, even as he’s serving, there’s a strain in him like it’s a deuce in the third set, like it’s gone on and on and on. It makes Yasu laugh, earns him a glare as Ikkei settles in across from him.

He hasn’t made a plate for himself. Yasu isn’t sure if that’s some weird male-pride choice he’s made, or if it’s just a function of how many eggs were in the fridge. He asks Ikkei if he’s hungry, if he’d maybe like some toast, but it just gets a little grunt.

“‘M good,” says Ikkei, and there’s really nothing more for it than that. Sure, he could press it, could spout off something like he always tells the boys about the dire need for proper breakfasts, but it’d only get Ikkei’s heels dug in deeper. He knows.

So. He sits, under that flinty eye, and eats his damn eggs.

They’re alright. A little runny.

“There’s shell in these,” he tries, voice listing very slightly toward the feline.

Bless him, Ikkei laughs--a short, sharp thing, like when his boys are being rowdy. “It builds character,” he deadpans, sounding for all the world as if he genuinely believes it. “Eat.”

He does. It gets all gummed up, jumbled with the words in his throat. 

Ikkei watches even as he grinds back to the kitchen, rummages through the cupboards without asking. He finds his prize before Yasu can chide him, though, stirs up a mug of instant coffee. Just one.

He sets it on the table like a set of handcuffs, demanding. It’s acrid, like motor oil, like the taste of cigarette smoke on his lips last night, but Yasu drinks it. Dregs and all, knowing fully well how it’ll sour him.

It’s fine, it’ll be fine. He has bigger things to worry about, fish flipped from the frying pan into the flame. The set of Ikkei’s jaw, the headache present on his brow.

The way he touched him, firm and steady, sage like he knew exactly what he wanted.

There’s got to be a way to talk about it. Some sidestep inroads he can make, some--something. Yasu sighs, wonders where the hell all last night’s coyness went.

Ikkei just smokes, slow with a furrowed brow, tapping off into the ashtray Yasu keeps there just for him. It makes Yasu think of old movies, of femmes fatale lighting hardboiled detectives’ cigarettes. Maybe with a lighter, maybe with the end of their own, like the obliquest kiss.

But he doesn’t smoke, and Ikkei gets his own light anyway, and they don’t talk. They don’t touch--not their free hands laid on the tabletop, not their ankles crossed below.

It feels like a long time before he finishes the eggs. They go cold, gluey on the end of his fork between bites, but he gets it all down anyway. 

Ikkei smiles, when he does, brief and warm and brilliant as a solar flare, and for an instant everything is as okay as it is when they’re drinking, when they’re leaning on each other belting old songs far off-key and off-kilter.

Yasu smiles back, overshooting nonchalance, clamoring to his halt somewhere _earnest._

“You good?” Ikkei’s voice rasps like a hearthstone, something familiar to lean on, but no, Yasu is not. He’s not _good,_ but there’s no way of knowing if what he is is better or worse. Maybe it’s outside of that completely.

Still he nods, biting his cheek. Still he echoes _yeah, I’m good._

“You?” he asks him, soft and overwarm like a slept-on pillow. Feathered, pressed. 

“Yep.” It’s the kind of tone a person might use on a dreary afternoon, to talk about the rain. “I got--things to do, though.”

Eyeteeth bury harsh into the flesh of Yasu’s cheek. “Right. So I’ll see you...?” _Tonight, like in a movie. This afternoon, when I find you standing hangdog at my door. Now, against the wall, because your hands won’t stay off me._

“I’ll call you,” Ikkei says, roughly, and it’s not quite so bad as it sounds. Yasu knows he will, a little after nine like every Sunday. Knows they’ll work out the schedule for their next practice game, knows Ikkei will stay around to shoot the breeze, leaning against the glass of the phone booth outside his parents’ house.

That won’t be the time to talk about it either, but if Yasu knows anything, it’s how to bide. How to wait. He hasn’t lost yet.

Ikkei stands, stubs out his half-smoked cigarette. Scrapes the dishes, leaves them in the sink. Makes ambling for the door.

Yasu almost asks him for a kiss, before he goes. Can feel the words in his mouth, the cadence of _oh,_ of _aren’t you going to?_

But it doesn’t come, not before the door’s latched, not before he’s gone.

* * *

Yasu leaves the top two buttons of his shirt undone, showing out a sliver of pale collarbone. Unmarked, unmarred and unbitten and unkissed this past weeks, flashing against dusky fabric as if to say _here’s what you’ve been missing._ Here’s where you’ve been cutting slack, here is something you can fix.

Ikkei does so love to fix things. Does so love to fix in Yasu’s mind, indelible like a chipped tooth.

On display, if you look hard enough. Rude to ask after. The kind of thing that is laughed off in conversation.

It’s too early in the evening for Yasu to think this much. It’s too early in his life, he is twenty-three years old and at a party, there are records playing, there is a beer can sweating in his hand. There are people here, friends from high school and beyond, crammed all into this suburban starter home, and they are happy.

Happy to see each other, to see _him,_ they ask how he’s been doing. If the boys are behaving themselves--Yasu laughs, says of course they aren’t, says he wouldn’t have it any other way. They clap him on the back, grasp his shoulder with their wide companionable palms, and the touch is notable only for how pedestrian it is.

He’s ruined, he realizes, for anyone else’s hands. But maybe that’s just how everyone feels, every young adult who’s slept with just one person, who thinks that life is short enough that they’ll never have anyone else.

Yasu shakes his head, takes a cleansing breath of air--laden as it is with the musk of tobacco. He is so newly nonvirginal, he wonders if everyone knows. If they know the emotion in him, like the tail-tangle of a rat king, if they can see it in the too-tight jeans he chose, the way he glances all around the room for Ikkei.

They must, at least, with the face-fall of his jokes, can-crushing listless energy. Someone asks if he’s alright. He lies--and they take it, he’s always been a good liar.

Maybe that’s enough to smooth it over, throw a sheet over it all.

He makes the effort. Flatters all the ‘really nice girls he oughta meet,’ lights cigarettes for his friends in a drab pantomime of the way he does for Ikkei.

It’s two rock’n’roll LPs, one and a half beers, an hour later before he finds Ikkei in the kitchen, backed against the robin’s-egg refrigerator. Just like him, Yasu thinks, to be guarding all the beer--he makes it a jab, keeps it on deck to needle at him, to garner one of those unamused frowns.

But even from across the room, it’s apparent that there’s no breaking in on his conversation. Yasu sees--he’s not standing against the fridge just to be an asshole.

He’s cornered.

Cornered, treed up by the most terrifying woman Yasu’s ever seen.

The menace is not in her frame--she’s built like a teapot, moon-faced, though she leverages it all into looking immovable. Her stance, the set of her wide hips. You couldn’t knock her over.

Her outfit, too, is pedestrian. Prim, pretty. There are girls here in daring mod minis, but this woman does not count herself among them. Her seafoam dress falls past her knees, a stiff sheath, and there’s a white silk scarf around her neck. Her hair is neat. Yasu thinks she could be a secretary, if she isn’t running the whole damn firm on her own.

But clothes don’t make this woman. She’s a thing held together by irritation, by righteous annoyance, by all the piss and vinegar she needs to lay it out.

She’s _snarling_ at Ikkei, sturdy arms crossed like a fortress, chewing him out with all the fervor he’d raise up for his own team.

And Ikkei--Ikkei hurls it all right back. Goes at her with everything he’s got, they tangle brilliantly together.

Yasu can’t hear what they’re arguing about. It doesn’t matter.

Nothing does, except for the glaring truth of it: Ikkei is having the time of his life. Whatever it is, they’re slinging it back and forth, rallying, and it looks like running full-bore, like _fun._

And then she snaps something crackling and fierce, and Ikkei laughs and laughs and laughs. She does too, hard, and it’s a mangle of sound, like a catfight above the music, the blur of conversation.

It’s almost beautiful, a brash and balls-out kind of joy, like giving birthday slaps. Yasu grinds his teeth.

“You’re staring,” someone says. An acquaintance, one of those people who went to college and got married before graduation, who has become entirely insufferable since. It doesn’t matter who it is beyond that.

Yasu shakes his head, swishes his can of beer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The acquaintance nudges him, a sharp elbow to the side. “Naaah, buddy, you’re looking _right_ at her,” he says, and a glance up confirms that his eyebrows are quirking suspiciously, “and it’s not hard to figure out why.”

If it is, if it really is that obvious, if this bastard has the temerity to say it--Yasu’s not sure what he’ll say.

Just that he’ll probably end up regretting it.

But the acquaintance just laughs, takes a swig of his own drink. “You’re jealous of Ukai-kun, huh? It looks like she _likes_ him.”

Yasu’s eyes roll. “It looks like she’s gonna take his head off,” he says, and the acquaintance laughs harder. Across the room, Ikkei is smiling down at her all crooked.

“That’s Akane-chan--oh, but don’t you go calling her that! It’s Honda-san to you. She’ll say you don’t have to be formal with her, but that’s just a test. She’s no fun at all, never lets anyone get away with anything.”

Honda Akane-san. She’s still squared up against Ikkei, growling almost down his throat.

“I could introduce you, if you want. Since you and Ukai-kun are already rivals.” He says it so glibly, as if he knows anything about them. Yasu just blinks.

“Nope,” he says, with as much cheer as he can muster. “Think I’ll let him have this one.”

A laugh, braying, from the acquaintance. “Can’t fault you there, buddy. Look at them going at it!”

 _Look at them going at it_ indeed. Yasu doesn’t say anything--just pulls at his beer, raises a brow.

“But really,” the acquaintance says. “Really, if you’re a betting man, I’ll bet you… hmm, three thousand yen that if she don’t rip his head off they’ll be married within a year.”

“I’ll take that bet,” says Yasu, with absolutely no intention of doing so.

With no intention of doing anything but escaping this wretched conversation. Slamming his car door behind him, blasting the radio. Getting plastered someplace else.

Eventually, of getting what he hasn’t got the right to call his.

* * *

This time, it’s Yasu who pays the tab early.

Ikkei’s barely finished with his okonomiyaki, barely one-fifth the way down his second drink--he quirks an eyebrow, dark pupils boring through him.

“Slow your roll,” he warns, and there’s nothing in that gruffness that tells whether or not he really means it.

Yasu chews his lip and hopes he doesn’t. Slows his roll anyway.

They sit and watch the volleyball. The game’s as lukewarm as the March evening, as the beer he’s warmed through with sweating palms, the same glass he’s been nursing for an hour.

 _Stop drinking,_ he remembers Ikkei telling him. Remembers the timbre of it, the grind of every single syllable.

So he barely drinks, though he’d really prefer to be drunk.

He’d have preferred to be drunk every time he’s seen Ikkei since--well. Since. Every chilly practice game, every staggered late-night phone call.

At the party, where Ikkei and Akane got on like a burning house, five-alarm friends in no time flat.

“How was it this time, driving in Tokyo?” He asks just so he won’t have to think about it. About the way she laughed with him, about the lame excuse he made, the way he bailed. About the call he got from Ikkei the next day, asking if he was okay.

If he was sick, or something. As if nothing had happened.

He doesn’t want to think about it, though, so he doesn’t.

Ikkei grunts. “Still hate it,” he says, simply. It gets a smile out of him, though, scrapes away the silence.

They talk about their boys, for a while. Who’s doing well, who needs to straighten up. The things they’re learning, the way they are. “That Nakamura needs to transfer to Nekoma right now,” Yasu says, “you don’t appreciate how funny that kid is.”

“Course I don’t. Kid’s not funny at all.” He hems a minute, as if thinking of just how unpleasant it really is to deal with the brat. “He’s an alright blocker, though, so you can’t have him.”

And on they go, for a while. Like the old friends that they are. Harping on the same old points, rehashing old scores. There’s life in it, the way there hasn’t been in any of their recent calls, their practice games.

It feels good, the back-and-forth, the barbs they trade. And maybe that’s supposed to be enough, maybe Yasu is supposed to feel noble about it. Is supposed to not care, if this is all he can have of him.

He doesn’t.

He wants, split-wide and yawing and jagged, and there could never be enough banter, enough breeze-shooting to cover that up.

So, when Ikkei chews his cheek, reminds Yasu of the time he got so screeching sake-drunk he admitted, bawling with laughter, to cheating on half a hundred tests in high school, Yasu fires back.

“I might’ve,” he says, coyly, “but I never got caught.” Not once. Even as an adult, even as it sets in that he really oughtn’t have done that, there’s still a gleam of pride in the getaway. Ikkei frowns.

“And really, Ikkei, is that as bad as fucking someone and then serving them a prison breakfast the morning after?”

Ikkei half-laughs--but only half. The corners of his mouth are quirked, but only slightly.

It’s like a cold hand on the back of Yasu’s neck, wondering whether this is how he screws it up.

But Ikkei shakes his head, sighs a long dismissive _naaaaaah._ “If it was gonna be a prison breakfast,” he says, “the damn eggs would’ve been powdered.”

Yasu ducks his head and laughs in earnest, then. He’s got to hand it to him. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

He could have just left, after all.

Or the thing with the powdered eggs.

Yeah.

When he comes up, chasing his breath--Ikkei is staring at him, mouth a hard stark line.

“If you’re bringing this up,” he grinds, terse but not unkind, “we’re talking in the car.”

Which is fair. Yasu gathers up his jacket, smiles to the waitress on his way out. Doesn’t even think that he’ll miss the rest of the match, doesn’t care. If someone asks, he’ll just tell ‘em it was boring. It was, anyway.

Or maybe it’s just that everything looks boring, when Ikkei is around.

Either way they get in the car, Ikkei hunched against the low ceiling, Yasu in the shotgun seat. Ikkei doesn’t turn the key, doesn’t punch the radio on.

For a moment all they do is stare through the windshield, watch the languid pulse of traffic in the street.

And then Ikkei turns to him, huffs _talk,_ and so he does.

“I’m not mad about the eggs,” he says, and the words fall like river rocks from his mouth, off-shaped and clumsy. He kicks himself.

But Ikkei just nods, just says he knows.

If this were a movie, Yasu would know what to say. Something other than a crack about his cooking--something elegant, heartthrobbing. Something to smooth it all over, make it all right, and then they’d drive into the sunset, bound together for parts unknown, and. Well.

The sun’s already set, and the only thing Yasu knows how to do is lean his head against Ikkei’s strong shoulder, murmur _I want you again._

This close, he can feel the way Ikkei heats. Can hear the wincing in his throat, see the way his knuckles wax white in his lap. The way one hand reaches, shaking, for Yasu’s.

Their fingers twine.

He thinks, maybe, he’s won.

Thinks it more when Ikkei pries open his mouth, grinds out “God, I wish you didn’t know how pretty you are.”

“Oh?” Like a cat, wending between Ikkei’s ankles, nuzzling at his hand.

“Mhm.” It hangs in the air, and Ikkei’s throat works.

“Makes my life difficult,” he says, and Yasu isn’t sure whether to smile. He does anyway, slow-curling, shot through with pride and panache because it’s okay, it must be okay.

“I’m your rival,” Yasu tells him, as if he could have possibly forgotten. “I’m supposed to make your life difficult, and I think I’m doing a bang-up job. Wouldn’t you say so, Ikkei?”

Half a laugh, a gentle breathy thing that sounds, somehow, like it hurts. Like Yasu couldn’t hear the blow, but this was the wind going out of him.

“Yeah,” Ikkei says. “You do, but I.”

The silence rings. Yasu crushes Ikkei’s fingers, without really knowing why. Maybe just to hold him down, to stake an undeniable claim.

“I can’t,” rasps Ikkei, and it feels as inevitable as the sink of the sun, the end of the day. “I can’t… live half in and half out.”

“I can’t make an honest man out of you, Yasu, or out of myself, and I’m not--I’m not the kind of man who plays around like that.”

Yasu’s teeth bury deep, deep in the soft flesh of his lip. His throat ties, on its own or as a desperate effort, around everything he shouldn’t say.

Ikkei sighs like the roll of the tide, slow and inexorable, a gentle unstoppable force.

“I--we…” He sounds tired, so tired. “Yasu, we’re too old for this.”

 _We’re young and stupid!_ Yasu wants to say. Wants to spit it, _hurl_ it at him. Wants to lay into him with everything he has, wants to lay waste to this cowardice, from his sturdy steadfast friend of all people.

Wants to ask him snarling if it has to do with _her,_ but even he knows how torrid, how ridiculous that’d sound.

And besides. There is a sanctuary in the way they fight, there is a _home,_ and if he rears up now they will never go back there again.

If anything could be enough, it’s that. Yasu clamps his mouth shut, wills it with all his strength to be enough.

When he has bolted everything down, Yasu nods his head and says _okay._

There’s something on Ikkei’s face that isn’t quite a smile, bare and pale and tepid like summer rain. “Alright,” he says, “alright.”

He doesn’t say he’s sorry. Ikkei never does.

Yasu doesn’t say it either. Not out of principle--just because he’s not. He was always willing, always ready to keep these secrets. Would have relished it, even, in some other world.

It’s a long time before he lists off Ikkei’s shoulder, before that hand leaves his own cold.

“You’re my best friend,” Ikkei says, hoarse as a man dying.

“You’re mine,” Yasu says back.

And that is the end of it. They sit a little while, not speaking, not touching, just breathing in the dregs of one another’s breath. 

Ikkei drives Yasu home, still silent. They indulge in it, in the emptiness.

When next they speak it will simply be business as normal, they will simply be rivals and friends, and not once, never once will they admit to looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! thank you so much for reading--i commend you, because this is a rare pairing of minor characters and also it's really long and just kind of Not The Sort Of Thing I Usually Write, so i'm really glad you took a chance on it! i'm glad that i did too--i had a lot of fun writing this and i learned so much!
> 
> please let me know what you thought about this piece, and come hang out with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles) if you like! i could always use more hq pals!
> 
> title comes from bad books' 'it never stops,' which alongside little green cars' 'my love took me down to the river to silence me' is the theme song for this fic.


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